Development Update: 26 September 2017

Hailing frequencies open, Admiral!

We are a bit behind schedule in our work on the Legacies expansion. Naturally, it's important to us to release a DLC that meets your expectations (and our own), and so we have pushed the release date of the DLC to October to allow enough time to get things right. For more info on the DLC, check below the patch notes.

However, we do have some changes ready that we'd like to put into the field, and so we are pushing a patch today with some fixes and a few additions. As always, your feedback and suggestions are important to us. Keep them coming!



Changes & Additions

• Added a choice of Map Shape options (Box, Ring, Hourglass, Ellipse) to the Advanced Map Settings pane when creating a new game.
  
• Added a number of new UI sound effects including: load/save game complete, colony founded, planet special discovery, war declaration, enslave, liberate, forced labor, experiments, and galaxy creation complete.
  
• Added a 'Right Click Close' UI option to the Options pane.
  
• 'B' now acts as a hotkey for buying production on the currently selected planet.
  
• There is now a "Hail Fleet" option that adds a diplomatic option when your fleet intercepts an alien colony ship attempting to land in the same system.
  
• AI factions will now accept trades for some resources, provided that a fair offer is made.
  
• Hiring mercenaries now costs influence, in addition to coins.
  
• The influence cost of securing a peace treaty will now vary depending on how the other faction feels the war has been going.
  
• All factions now receive 1 influence per turn if they have any contact with alien factions.
  
• When initially researched, Markets now increase trade capacity by 2 each (up from 0).
  

Fixes

• Changed AI handling of three+ sided conflicts, should fix logic errors in AI code.
  
• Reduced the frequency of several types of planet disaster events.
  
• Fix for a formatting error when trading with marauder companies.
  
• Made several low-level changes intended to work around problems with the latest AMD drivers.
  
• In windowed mode, window resizing cursors should now appear when appropriate.
  
• Altered the deficit handling rules -- forced scrapping now always yields some coin return.
  
• Adjusted planet autobuild logic to favor Trade in situations where deficits are imminent.
  
• AI players should now build more Markets during the late game.
  
• Fix for a bug that could cause re-contacted empires to respond as if you'd just meet.
  

(Click here to view the complete development changelogs.)


The Legacies DLC release has been delayed to October. It includes a new playable faction (The Tinkers), a new minor faction (The Arda Seed), and a number of new related features.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/698280/Stars_in_Shadow_Legacies/


In their zeal to serve their world-spanning megamachine master, the Tinkers have remade themselves as a cyborg species, part organism and part machine. The transformation is psychological as well as physical; Tinkers live in harmony without emotion, immune to the effects of morale as long as they are connected to the collective through their Machine Altars.

Harmonization
To join the collective of the Tinkers' machine god Dzibix, one undergoes the process of Harmonization, which both converts the organism into a cyborg and establishes a neural connection to the collective. The Tinkers themselves undergo this procedure at birth, and it has become a crucial part of their life cycle: they are no longer capable of reproducing without it. Alien populations can also be Harmonized, if in the presence of a Machine Altar and sufficient Martial Law force (to prevent anyone from having second thoughts about the process). Harmonized populations become immune to morale effects as long as they remain in the presence of a Machine Altar, and can be used for Forced Labor or Experiments without penalty. The cyborg versions of most species gain in Labor output, but suffer reduced Science yield.



Machine Altars
The daily lives of the Tinkers are centered around their Machine Altars, which are a Tinkers-specific variant of the Factory. Machine Altars serve both as a place of work and as a medium of connection to the collective. Tinkers who are transported to a planet without a Machine Altar will become Disconnected, remaining immune to morale but suffering penalites to Labor and Science output. When Harmonized alien populations become Disconnected, however, they again become susceptible to morale penalties, and may become discontent or revolt as with normal colonists.



De-Harmonization
The Harmonization process can be reversed in alien populations, provided that the appropriate technologies are researched. De-Harmonized colonists return to normal, though they retain any morale modifiers that might have been previously masked by their Harmonized condition. Tinkers cannot be de-Harmonized; they have been living as cyborgs for so long that they can no longer function without the machine.

That's all for now! See you in October.

Transmission ends.